Case Number 14246

THE TRACEY FRAGMENTS

The Charge

Something's missing.

Opening Statement

Actress Ellen Page had been working steadily by the time Juno hit big
and automatically granted her some cachet. In Hard Candy, she had played
a jailbait nymphette whose seeming naïveté masked a calculating mind
bent on punishing a pedophile in over his head; in sobering contrast, she played
sweet-natured superhero darling Kitty Pryde in X-Men: The Last Stand a
year later. What were the makings of a career as a chameleonic character actress
quickly careened into a post-Juno turn as both a leading lady and a
capital-S, capital-A Serious Actress.

The Tracey Fragments is, make no mistake, Page's show, possibly only
overshadowed by the film's narrative gimmick, a constant series of
frames-within-frames that makes Ang Lee's use of it in Hulk seem staid
and linear by comparison. It's an interesting device, and one that would almost
assure a place on the fringe of independent cinema, a film festival curiosity.
Page's presence -- as the only name actor in the cast -- brings some spotlight
to the proceedings. The result is still a curiosity, but one anchored by a
charismatic lead in a characteristically complicated role in a complicated
picture. Welcome to Tracey's fractured brain.

Facts of the Case

Tracey Berkowitz (Ellen Page, Juno) is a fifteen-year-old, "just
a normal girl who hates herself," living a miserable life of teenage angst
and lower middle class squalor, forced to deal with a crumbling home life,
bullying classmates, and a forceful crush on the new boy at school (Slim Twig).
When Tracey's brother, Sonny (Max McCabe-Lokos), goes missing while under her
supervision, she embarks on a long journey into the heart of the city and deep
into her own splintered mind to find him.

The Evidence

It's impossible to address The Tracey Fragments without addressing its
central conceit, the constantly morphing frames-within-frames that provide the
more literal allusion of the movie's title. Director Bruce McDonald, working
from a script by Barbara Medved based on her own novel, does his best to make
the gimmick relevant to the plot (and indeed it functions as both technical and
narrative device), but it is still ultimately a novelty. Breaking up the frame
is nothing new, of course. To use a recent example, Mike Figgis has been known
to indulge in it in films like Timecode and Hotel. But the advent
of digital technology and its increasingly sophisticated uses has allowed
McDonald and his team of editors to move within the frame in incredible ways.
McDonald's frame isn't merely split into quadrants like Figgis's or arranged
superficially like Lee's; The Tracey Fragments' frames bubble and whirl
and cascade across the screen, dissolving and juxtaposing and repeating and
starting all over again. The effect is just as dizzying as it sounds: technical
junkies will revel in McDonald's miasma of overlapped footage, found shots, and
occasional audio flourishes. A goodly portion of the audience will wonder who is
doing this to them, and why.

It's a fair question, and one no doubt asked by Tracey herself. Tracey's
state of mind, the metaphorical content of the title, is about as addled as the
audience invited to peek into her head. Tracey's home life, trapped in a gray
suburban hell with loveless parents, finds solace only in a tentative crush on
fellow classmate, Billy (Twig, looking like one of the Goth kids from South
Park) and her brother, whom she has temporarily hypnotized into believing
he's a dog (a plot quirk that feels lifted from a much more light-hearted
movie). All Tracey really has is her fantasy life, one in which classmates
relentlessly pursue her through the halls like villagers after Frankenstein's
monster and her tentative romantic fumblings play out like a chirpy sitcom theme
song or Sid & Nancy-styled epic, misunderstood love. Presented
initially nude and wrapped in a shower curtain while riding a city bus, Tracey
recounts the facts as she sees them -- an unreliable narrator indeed. What
follows, over a scant 77 minutes, is a broken little girl's tale: the outcome is
never really in question from the moment Tracey bolts from her parents' home,
leaving behind the only clue of her missing brother's whereabouts. It's the
journey that matters, and without ever saying as much, this is Tracey's
confession and attrition, racing into the seedy city -- Canada has rarely looked
so dirty on film -- even though she already knows what she'll find.

Page holds the piece(s) together. Diminutive and moon-faced, Page is
deceptive in the power she brings to the screen, allowing her to play the
mature-naif types at which she excels with some degree of believability. Tracey
wouldn't be out of place with Juno Macguff and Kitty Pryde at the family
reunion, smoking cigarettes outside while the rest of the clan mingles at the
buffet table. Page's physical presence is somewhat of a liability. It
occasionally interferes, such as the scene where Tracey unleashes a stream of
profanities in her mother's face, seeming more comical than shocking. The
hallucinatory framework mitigates a lot of these problems, these gaps in logic
and tone: when it's all internal, everything we're witnessing is suspect. Page,
essentially delivering an extended monologue for long stretches of film, is the
fuel for the film's editorial engine, the force behind the raw narrative chopped
and dissected and interspersed with visual non-sequiturs. Without a lead of
Page's caliber -- and one still forming as an actress, doubly impressive -- the
gimmick would come across as just that, a gimmick. Page, however, gives the
filmmakers some real emotional juice, and their bending of her performance to
suit the hiccupping frame structure is the real feat of the movie.

Sound and picture are nominal, if otherwise unremarkable. The extras include
a brief, flat making-of featurette; the theatrical trailer; and "The Single
Frame," basically an image gallery that doesn't allow you to scroll through
the images as they play as one long slideshow. The "Tracey:
Re-Fragmented" section showcases the winners of an online competition in
which McDonald posted all of the film's raw footage and challenged users to edit
the film as they saw fit. A unique competition and an apt one, considering the
spotlight the movie puts on the art of film editing, and the contest's winning
entry, by Joel Norn, is included here, as well as handful of short-listed
entries. A commentary by McDonald and his editors would have been a fascinating
exercise in technical commentary, but McDonald only gives a few scant thoughts
in the featurette.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

There's certainly a lot of technical filmmaking to admire in The Tracey
Fragments, but some prominent story deficiencies coupled with the
overwhelming editing technique is a lot to absorb. The use of multiple frames
already invites the suspicion that this is style over substance, and a devotion
to needless plot tics hurts the story, such as Tracey's therapist, played by
character actor Julian Richings (My Life Without Me) in drag and a
precious indie-rock soundtrack that suggests a feeble stab at art house
credibility (and commercial viability). A movie this involved in its own weight
and cleverness can be wearisome, and more than a few viewers will be turned off
by the film's lofty gravity and willful starkness. It may be a heartier breed of
indie film fan that can withstand the multi-pronged assault of The Tracey
Fragments; on the other hand, those fans might be kidding themselves and it
really is that tiresome.

Closing Statement

Love it or hate it, The Tracey Fragments is bound to provoke a
reaction, which is enough of a feat for any movie with anything to say. Be wowed
by the frames-within-frames or dismiss them as pretentious art house overkill;
go with Tracey on her hellbent journey into the grimy city or call it out as a
dull, "movie" attempt at authenticity. Page fans will like her
performance, if not necessarily her character. The duality of each of these
choices is easier than broken little Tracey's options, so be grateful you're
neither her nor her very tired editors.

The Verdict

I'm going to say Not Guilty, though a stronger case for prosecution could
easily be made. Tracey Berkowitz is ordered to get it together already and get
on medication or something for God's sake.